Three killed in small plane crash near Essex County Airport in Fairfield

FAIRFIELD — A small plane crashed and burst into a fireball after an aborted landing at Essex County Airport this evening, killing an accomplished New York City doctor and two members of her family, authorities said.

Margaret D. Smith, 70, a licensed pilot, was at the controls of the single-engine plane, a Cirrus SR22, when it went down on a commercial strip about 100 yards north of the Fairfield airport. Witnesses said they heard two distinct explosions and saw flames leaping from the wreckage.

"Tragically, there are no survivors," Essex County Sheriff Armando Fontoura said.

Killed with Smith were Michael Ferguson, 44, and his wife Theresa. Fairfield Deputy Police Chief Steven Gutkin said Smith and the Fergusons are believed to be related. On her Facebook page, Smith’s full name is Margaret Dennis Smith Ferguson.

Smith, a rheumatologist who lives in Manhattan, is a professor of clinical medicine and a senior associate dean at New York Medical College and a program director for internal medicine at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, according to a medical school biography and a Who’s Who entry.

The flight originated in Plattsburgh, N.Y., a city on the edge of Lake Champlain near the Canadian border, Gutkin said at a press briefing late tonight.

It remained unclear what went wrong. Smith was descending for a landing shortly before 5:30 p.m. when she pulled up, Gutkin said. Moments later, the Cirrus crashed along Daniel Road, a blocked lined with businesses and warehouses.

The impact and the intense fire that followed reduced the wreckage to an unrecognizable snarl of debris. Only the tail section remained intact. Firefighters doused the flames with chemical retardant.

Garfield Smith, 40, and several co-workers were inside the offices of Ned Stevens Gutter Cleaning when they heard a thunderous blast directly outside the building, startling the group.

"When the crash hit, you could tell it wasn’t a car," said Smith, who is not related to the victim. "It was much louder than that."

View full size

Through a window, Smith said, he saw flames shooting skyward from the parking lot. When the men ran outside, they heard a second explosion, Smith said.

"It’s amazing it didn’t touch the building," a thankful Smith said later.

Authorities said the crash might have been even deadlier had it not come on the long holiday weekend, noting that fewer employees were in the area today than on a typical weekday.

"If this had happened tomorrow," Gutkin said last night, "it could have been a drastically different scene."

Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were en route to the wreckage last night. The agency’s probes typically take six months to a year.

Records show the plane was a four-seater built in 2005.

The Cirrus SR22 is a fast, sleek technically advanced aircraft built largely from composite materials, which has gained a reputation among some for its accident rate. While the plane has a unique, built-in parachute recovery system that a pilot in trouble can activate, the number of fatal crashes has raised safety questions in recent years over the plane’s design and handling.

The Air Safety Foundation of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association found Cirrus actually fared better in pilot-related accidents involving takeoffs, approach and maneuvering, but failed worse in so-called "go-arounds," in which a pilot pulls out of an approach to a runway, and then tries it again.

Its high performance also makes it less forgiving of errors than slower planes.

According to NTSB data, there have been 31 fatal crashes since 2004.

The last fatal plane crash in New Jersey occurred April 3 in West Milford, where a Cessna 172 went down near Greenwood Lake Airport. The pilot was killed, and a passenger was critically injured. In February, five people, including two children visiting from Poland, died in a crash at Monmouth Executive Airport in Wall.